


Son of the Hunt

by writteninhaste



Series: Never Quite Eden [3]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, European Mythology - freeform, Mythology - Freeform, magical creature!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 15:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8378320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writteninhaste/pseuds/writteninhaste
Summary: “Grant me some wild expressions, Heavens, or I shall burst.” ~George Farquhar





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This part of the series has been entirely re-written (bar one or two paragraphs which were kept). If anyone wants to the original version, send me a message and I can give you the pdf.

When d’Artagnan was a child, he had lived for stories of the woman his father had married; the woman he called mother but whose face had been lost to the vagaries of time. He had begged his father for stories, almost every night, and his father never grew tired of the tellings.

Sweet Thérèse, he called her, wild Thérèse, Thérèse of the dark hair and darker eyes. Her mother had despaired; her father had been known to tear his beard for shame. But sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse, never could be tamed. She had loved a young man of the village but she was not yet ready to be his wife. The world was wide; the world was wild; she wanted one final moment to be free before she donned the yoke of sobriety.

The storm came, as storms are wont to do, hard on the heels of the oppressive, gripping heat of summer’s height. The thunder was the stampede of horses, the wind the baying of the hounds, and against the moon there was a shadow: a great lord astride a charger, dark as night.

The abbé called the village into the chapel. He placed Holy Eucharist at window and at door. The people knelt to their prayers and called on God to defend them. Everyone was afraid – everyone but Thérèse.

Sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse, Thérèse of the dark hair and darker eyes, climbed to the top of an oak tree and watched the hunt ride by.

He must have heard her, seen her, sensed her – for as the horses and the hounds thundered past in a ghostly cavalcade the Huntsman reined in his horse and called to her: _Little Bird, Little Bird, come down from that tree._

His voice was terrible to hear, his face scorched her very soul, but in that moment she loved him. Oh, how she loved him. Fierce and wild and free, the Huntsman – for a brief spark of time _her_ Huntsman.

Down from the tree she came and into his arms she went. Through the storm they went riding, and on the wet grass they lay. His riders stood as witness and sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse knew what it meant to be free.

And when all was over, when the storm had passed, and all that was left was the cool gleam of starlight, sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse, Thérèse of the dark hair and darker eyes, took herself back to the village and agreed to become Alexandre d’Artagnan’s faithful, loving wife.

A week and they were married and no-one was surprised. Indeed, many thought it best: a hasty union to cage a too-wild bride. She thought, perhaps, He would come for her. As she made her way down the aisle; she thought it again when the bells rang in celebration of the marriage. She thought it one final time on her wedding night – and then she put the thought away.

That autumn brought a harvest unlike any ever seen, and sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse, Thérèse of the dark hair and darker eyes grew round with child. The village congratulated her husband on having such a fertile wife and sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse kept her silence.

There was plenty of food for the winter and as the nights grew long her baby grew. She would sit by the fire of an evening, making a blanket for his cradle, and she would feel him kick and move inside her. So strong, even with so many months to go. And when a storm would roll across the horizon, she would feel the baby still (as if listening); and when the wind failed to sound like baying hounds, when the thunder was merely thunder and not the tramp of horses’ hooves, she would feel that baby curl up tight inside her and she would find herself whispering to him: _soon, soon_.

Soon, became one night at the very end of March. There was a storm unlike any that had ever before been seen. Sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse, screamed her labour as the storm roiled overhead. Rain fell in torrents from the sky. The midwife could not reach the house, there was not a neighbour to the farm for miles, and it fell to Alexandre d’Artagnan to try and help his wife.

Through the night she laboured – and for all that while the storm did not abate. The wind stole the flickering candlelight, lashed at the shutters and rattled the doors. The very house seemed under siege from unseen forces and d’Artagnan prayed for their deliverance. But all his prayers went unanswered.

Eventually, eventually, the storm subsided. Light bled slowly over the horizon and Charles d’Artagnan, only son of Alexandre and Thérèse took his first breath. He screamed to be ripped from the warm, safe home he had known – whimpered even as his father wrapped him in soft, warm cloth and granted him his name. His father could not look away from his small and perfect son, but if he had, he might have noticed sooner his wife’s wide and vacant eyes. He might have seen how still her chest remained, might have felt how her skin began to cool.

It took more time than Alexandre d’Artangnan would confess for him to notice that his wife had died. He laid his son down into his crib and closed the mother’s eyes. He bathed her, dressed her, fed his child. And when the midwife and his neighbours came to check on them, they found the father singingly softly to his child and the mother ready for the undertaker.

Sweet Thérèse, wild Thérèse, Thérèse of the dark hair and darker eyes was laid to rest within the churchyard. All the village mourned her, and cursed the storm that had prevented aid from reaching her. They vowed, as a collective, to help her poor young son – to watch him grow, to guide him – for they felt a responsibility to the mother.

Wild, they all had called her – that dark-eyed, dark-haired woman they had buried – and wild her son became.


	2. Chapter 2

d’Artagnan arrived in Paris, baying for blood. He bared his teeth at Athos, at Porthos, at Aramis – thought he could taste blood at the back of his throat and wanted to tear the smug arrogance off Aramis’ face with his teeth. The fury of the storm rolled in his veins and his mind was consumed by thoughts of the hunt. Faintly, as in the echo of a distant dream, he heard his father’s voice cajoling him to patience:  _prudence, Charles_ , he’d say,  _temperance_. Such had been his father’s cry from the beginning – one man’s desperate attempt to curb the nature of a son who had been born half Wild.

As a boy, d’Artagnan had been prone to racing through the countryside, the local dogs at his heels, and the Gascon wildlife fleeing before them. He would return home, flushed and exhilarated, hounds trotting alongside him with lolling tongues and panting breaths, easy in their shared comradery. Alexandre d’Artagnan would watch and shake his head, sending the dogs away to their true masters, before ushering his son inside for evening prayers.

The ritual had calmed d’Artagnan’s thrill for the chase, helped to pacify his more feral instincts. That ritual, and all it represented, was gone now: lost to frozen soil and a shallow grave. The scent of his father’s skin had already begun to fade, and there was no-one left to hold d’Artagnan’s baser will in check. He had been left with nothing but a name, and quarry for the hunt. And oh, how d’Artagnan lived to hunt.

oOo

It seemed strange to d’Artagnan, in those early days when Paris was new and fresh and exciting, how  _magnetic_  Porthos was. Whilst with Aramis he maintained a precarious détente, d’Artagnan was drawn to Porthos like a starving man might fall upon a feasting table. He made d’Artagnan _hungry,_ desperate for something he could not name. Porthos would tip back his head, open his mouth to laugh, and d’Artagnan would feel a sharp tug behind his navel, would feel his breath catch in his lungs and his heart begin to race. Then Porthos would stop laughing and the feeling would fade.

D’Artagnan was at a loss to explain it, but the ordeal left him with an itch under his skin: an itch with sank into his liver, his bones, his heart. He would watch Porthos roll coins across his palm, watch him strike fear into the heart of a Red Guard and d’Artagnan would find himself hoping that here might be a man who hungered for the thrill of the chase as much as d’Artagnan did: a man as Wild as he was; a man who had learned to control that Wildness, to use it: to become a musketeer.

D’Artagnan would have pledged his faith on bended knee, have grovelled in the dirt like a mongrel dog, if only Porthos would share the secret of his control. As it was, Porthos seemed utterly unaware of the hunger flaming in d’Artagnan’s belly – only clapped him on the shoulder and led him out to hunt their quarry.

oOo

They all four stank of smoke and sweat; d’Artagnan could still smell the sour spike of his own fear sharp in his nostrils. He bent low to speak Vadim’s ear and for the first time felt now desire to hunt.

He was sick and weak and wounded; he wanted to curl up in his den and lick his wounds in private. He stumbled away, dazed and aching and even the heavy weight of Porthos’ palm on his shoulder did not stir him.

Later, he would feel the draw of Porthos once again – tavern smoke and wine and a plethora of sharp-eyed women would make Porthos seem _old_. D’Artagnan would circle him, meet his gaze and there would be a challenge sparked between them.

Nothing would come of it, not yet, Athos would intervene (unintentionally perhaps) call for wine and Aramis (conspicuously absent) would be remembered and idly sought for.

At home, in the bed he kept at Constance’s house, the thump of his heart felt like the tramping of hooves within his breast, and not for the first time d’Artagnan would wonder whether there was something wrong with him. Honour and chivalry were a far cry from the lust for blood, for sport, that lurked always in the back of his mind. He would remember Porthos goading an opponent to rash violence and Athos’ cool hand on his skin ( _no,_ it seemed to whisper, _no – not yet)_.

No man should be able to look at another and think ‘predator’ or ‘prey’. No man should be so driven by the need to hunt, to ride. And d’Artagnan had wanted nothing else since he was a boy.

oOo

Of late, d’Artagnan’s dreams had been plagued with visions of a mounted host. They chased a white stag through the trees, hounds as large a ponies bayed and gnashed their teeth, and before them rode a horned monster, astride a charger black as night. In his dreams, d’Artagnan wanted nothing more than to join them: to ride, and ride and ride. In his dreams, Porthos’ laughter chased him on the wind and Aramis and Athos stood to one side, heads turned away as the hunt rode by.

He had felt the coming of the storm as a thrumming in the blood. Aramis, it seemed had felt it too, for he banished them all to their homes and d’Artagnan most specifically. Porthos had gone with ill grace and the promise of revelries another night. Athos had walked d’Artagnan to the doorstep and bade him stay there. Constance had hung a hawthorne twig upon the lintel and d’Artagnan had retreated to his room.

The storm took hold of Paris sometime in the early afternoon, and by nightfall d’Artagnan felt thoroughly sick. His heart beat too fast, his blood ran too hot and there was a hunger – pure and primal and devastating – in his veins. The storm was wild and had d’Artagnan been a greater fool he would have said that it was calling for him.

In Lupiac, storms like this had seemed to carry with them the screams of tormented men. His father used to bar the door and keep him in – though whether it was to protect his son, or to restrain him, was never said. D’Artagnan thought his father might well have been afraid of what his son might do, if allowed to roam outside.

Here, in Paris, d’Artagnan fancied he could hear the mournful cry of hounds waiting for their master. He thought he must be going insane.

Lightning cracked behind the shutters and d’Artagnan could take it no longer. Leaving his place of safety in the middle of the bed, he threw open the casement and looked down into the street. The wind moaned and whipped around the room, tugging at d’Artagnan’s hair and clothes as if inviting him to join a game.

A group of women were dancing in the street. The rain-water kicked up by their feet splashed against their skirts like blood. Two hounds, huge, even when crouched on all fours, guarded the shadows as the revellers spun and stamped in a wild melee.

D’Artagnan must have made some sort of movement for, as one, the women stopped their dancing and tipped their heads up to look at him. They called to him in some strange tongue – the words utterly alien – but d’Artagnan felt their meaning in his very bones:  _Come join, come join; come, join us in our Revelry_.

D’Artagnan braced his hands on the windowpane, feeling the rain lash against his skin. They would hunt, he knew; they might even let him lead; they would have fine prey.

D’Artagnan swung a leg out of the window, the hounds pushed to their feet in anticipation, and the church bells reclaimed the night.

The first chime crashed through the air with more force than lighting. The women screamed, pure, unadulterated fury, and fled. The hounds wheeled around to follow them; stopping only to bay with regret when it was clear d’Artagnan was not following. The echo of the bells rolled through the streets behind them, and it was like a flood of fresh water, washing away the filth. The air seemed fresher, the storm somehow lesser, and d’Artagnan was able to haul himself back inside, shaken and soaking wet.

In the morning, Constance would ask what had been doing, standing out in the rain. D’Artagnan would have no answer.

**Fin.**


End file.
